Fenger High School parents are knocking on doors in Altgeld Gardens and Roseland today, calling for a boycott of the school on Monday and Tuesday, following an outbreak of violence yesterday in which they say students were beaten and locked in the school while parents outside were prevented from getting their children and cursed out by security guards and police.

A statement from the Committee for Safe Passage to Schools said that police and security guards “abused” and “brutalized” Fenger students in yesterday’s incident.

“The students are not learning anything, with all the tension and fear in the school, so why not keep them where they are safe,” said Cheryl Johnson of the Committee for Safe Passage. “It took Derrion Albert’s death to show what’s going on” at Fenger, but violence has been a daily problem there since Carver High School was closed in 2006 and its students sent to Fenger, she said. “I don’t think we need to bury another child,” she said.

Fenger parents met with Mayor Daley, CPS chief Ron Huberman and Board of Education President Michael Scott last Monday, presenting a proposal that Carver be reopened as a general high school, Johnson said. A portion of the building currently houses Carver Military Academy.

CPS officials at the meeting maintained the building is too small for that, according to Johnson.

She said the building has a capacity of 2100 and the military academy has less than 500 students. At the meeting CPS officials maintained the building’s capacity is 750, although Scott later admitted its capacity is around 2000 in an appearance on the Cliff Kelley Show on WVON, she said. Johnson said there were nearly 2100 students at Carver when she attended in the mid-1970s. “It wasn’t overcrowded,” she said.

“These people making decisions don’t live here and haven’t worked in the schools, and they don’t understand the dynamics that are triggering the violence that is going on in our schools,” she said.

A leader of the environmental justice group People for Community Recovery, based at Altgeld Gardens, Johnson said the Committee for Safe Passage is reaching out to parents in Roseland to join the boycott and show “that parents of Altgeld Gardens and Roseland do care about their children’s safety, and we want concrete solutions to resolve the dangerous atmosphere at Fenger.”